Android 3.0: Hell Yes It's a Fork. But Who Cares?

"If Google only had just vanilla versions of Gingerbread and
Honeycomb as the two distinct development targets, and everyone ran
just the vanilla versions of these platforms on their phones, the
situation would be manageable. What makes things untenable is that
the Android OEMs/ODMs/Carriers and their "Value Add" that they keep
putting into the the phones and tablet ROMs.

"Right now, each OEM has their own special UI layer and apps
that they like to throw on top of the existing OS that Google
releases. HTC has "Sense", Motorola has "Blur" and so-on, all with
their own various API additions and specialized apps that in many
cases replace basic vanilla Android functions. This is what is
creating problems for developers, not the actual versions of
Android."